


A Moment

by BamSara



Series: Cryptids, Emotions And The Possible End Of The World [6]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Blood and Gore, Comedy, Denial of Feelings, Dib caught the love bug and doesnt like it, Feral Zim, Injury, Jealous Zim (Invader Zim), Jealousy, M/M, Minor Character Death, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Possessive Behavior, Zim is just off the shits thirsty, for blood and for Dib, werewolfs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29012235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BamSara/pseuds/BamSara
Summary: Dib realizes he has a crush on Zim, doesn't know how to deal with it in the slightest and tries to completely ignore it and play it off despite it being so blaring obvious, making him more avoidant and dismissive.Meanwhile, Zim is incredibly suspicious. Disturbed by the thought of the Dib swept away by someone else, he plots to eliminate the problem, if only he could figure out who that problem is.A two-shot about two losers dealing with their (assumed) unrequited pining.(Can be read as stand alone)
Relationships: Dib/Zim (Invader Zim)
Series: Cryptids, Emotions And The Possible End Of The World [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1611253
Comments: 57
Kudos: 535





	A Moment

**Author's Note:**

> It's been minute since I posted here! I've been dealing with an ongoing medical issue for the past couple of months, and there was a time period where I couldn't functionally use my body normally, but I'm slowly getting back into the groove of regularly creating content. Writing had felt really difficult and foreign to me in the recovery process, so instead of beating myself up getting frustrated with Galaxy Days, I figured writing a one-shot (well, a two-shot now) would help smooth it along. In fact, this whole idea started from me listening to lildeath-Moment. Thank you guys for being patient with the updates, and I hope you like this story :D
> 
> BTW: this is an AU of the current 'Cryptids, Emotions and the Possible End Of The World' series, but it can be read as standalone. Set somewhere in their senior year of high school, possibly after the Stars vs The Sea
> 
> NOTE: This chapter contains violence, gore, blood, and the usual likes of it, including decapitation. There's also embarrassing situations here, but nothing written to meant to imply anything heavily sexual. Mostly just Zim's lack of understanding for human norms. Also, this is ZADR, with more emphasis on romantic than I'm used to writing. Enjoy~

He doesn’t know when it formed or how long it’s been there hiding in the deepest corner of his brain, but the realization of it’s existence hit him harder than that one time Gaz drop kicked him for breaking her concentration in the middle of a boss battle.

Well, maybe this realization hurt harder. Only it felt more like a sharp stab of fear and disgust in his chest rather than a pounding headache.

It comes out of nowhere, with no warning, no chance of reprieve afterwards and leaves Dib staring his tray with the slop they served as ‘lunch’ as the only grounding thing that keeps his brain from spiraling into airy-thoughts and a hellish soup of ‘oh no’ and ‘not now’ and _‘why him?’_.

This wasn’t like him. This shouldn’t have happened. Detachment was Dib’s specialty, and him and Zim’s unlikely ‘friendship’ (allyship, partners, rivalry, there were too many labels that could serve them but never really did them complete justice) was a miracle in of itself.

He’s Dib Membrane; paranormal investigator and sole protector of Earth, with a heavy duty of containing the greatest threat to his planet sitting next him, too lost in his own monologue to notice Dib quietly losing his mind in their high school cafeteria, unburdened by the limitations of human feelings and affection. Part of him squirms when he realizes that's something that Zim would say, and Dib has half a mind to slam his face against the table uncaring if his glasses shove right back up into his eye sockets.

It could have been literally anyone else. (No, it couldn’t have been.) The very fact that he feels such a thing is inconvenient, not to mention downright embarrassing. Humiliating. Denial was strong but the fear of Zim even catching a slight wind of such a thing was horrifying enough that Dib felt his heart start to race and his skin start to prickle.

He barely registers the fact that his fingers are starting to go numb when something is shoved in front of his face and is wiggled around until his eyes start to hurt from trying to follow it.

Zim is holding a piece of celery up to his face. He thrusts it again, as if to make a show. “This is you.” He states, and then promptly bites it in half, chews with an open mouth before swallowing. “And _that’s_ how easy I could crush your pathetic, weak human body in seconds if you lose attention again! Broken, crunched up and wasted like this puny, ugly lettuce stick-”

“Celery.” Dib corrects. His lungs feel sore.

Purple eyes flit to amber, and Dib stiffens. Zim wrinkles his face, opens his maw and crunches the last of the celery loudly as if to make his point. His cheeks puff out in the slightest, whether from the food or from irritation, Dib can’t tell, and immediately berates himself for noticing such a detail. “The Dib is sick.”

Said human looks down to his tray. There’s a spot in his vegetable missing where Zim has been picking at his food. though the meat slop is unsurprienly untouched. He pushes his tray across the table as far as his arm could reach. The recent turmoil in his head was sending his stomach in churns and suddenly he was even less hungrier than before, not like the cafeteria food here was appetizing anyway. “What makes you say that?”

“You stopped breathing for a moment.”

He tries not to look in Zim’s direction and fails. “…It’s called holding your breath.”

“Why were you doing it?”

Dib blinks. Zim’s stare is a little more intense than he would be comfortable with. The sound of cafeteria chatter drones out everything else. “I don’t know.”

A pause, a scrutiny filled glare, and Zim huffs. “Don’t do that. I don’t like it.”

For half a moment, Dib thinks about holding his breathe just to grate on the alien’s nerves. The other half is spent wondering why it even bothers him in the first place. He cuts off his own thoughts by clearing his throat. “Don’t tell me what to do. I’ll spit on you.”

“I’ll burn off your tongue.” Zim’s answer is reflexively immediate, but there’s no malice in his tone. “I told you this filthy earth food would make you sick eventually. It’s the _meat_.”

Dib hums something noncommittal, keeping his gaze away from him. He pokes at his food, cold and stiff now. He’s not even sure if the slop could even be called meat. “I’m not sick.”

“LIES. I can see it in your face.” Zim makes a waving motion towards his face. Dib freezes as a claw comes centimeters from the skin of his cheek. “It’s feverish. All pink and softened. Do not lie, stink-boy. Zim is smart, I know these things from your earthen-medical informative!”

Dib doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he does the first flustered thought his mind could come up with in the two seconds it took to process the information; grabs the ends of his tray and dumps it over the alien’s lap (the ‘meat’ doesn’t burn through his uniform but Zim’s disgusted yell echoes through the room anyways) before standing up from the bench and power-walking out of the cafeteria.

* * *

He buries that realization deep in the far back corners of his mind, locks it up in a box, throws said methodical box into a methodical river and throws himself into literally anything else that would save him from sparing even a few seconds on the thought that he might like Zim.

(“like” is probably an understatement, and- oh god damn, it he did it again.)

It’s not easy trying to juggle this new development along with high school, trying not to piss off Gaz, doing paranormal investigations for Swollen Eyeball, dealing with Zim’s usual antics but Dib somehow manages. Sure, he’s at his wit’s end and he’s starting to consider that maybe his dad was right and such unfounded feelings were a symptom of his ongoing insanity, but he manages. Somehow.

It’s not so easy to manage when Dib is locked inside of an alien homebase, hanging upside down from the ceiling with a cord wrapped around his foot as the object of his affections pacing circles around him whilst he rants about his newest plan for world domination.

He doesn’t even know what Zim is talking about. He’s tried way too hard to tone out the nasally voice he’s certain if the bug actually _did_ have a viable plan for Earth’s destruction, Dib would have mentally blocked it out. He feels a little guilty for that, and it makes him nauseous. Actually, wait, no. Thats just the blood rushing to his head from dangling like this for twenty minutes.

Zim marches around him in circles, their heads leveled at the same height. He hooks a claw around Dib’s cowlick to twirl rotate him as he talks. It’s incredibly demeaning, but surprisingly gentle. “-and then AFTER I infiltrate your military network, I’ll reduce all your weaponry to nothing! I’ll melt it all down, nuclear and all, to greasy, stinky cheese and serve it to your people under the guise of a new pizza cooperation-”

Gir yells from somewhere in the kitchen. “That was my idea!”

“-and then once your population is sick with radiation poisonings and ill with _filthy_ grease and lard, it’ll be easy to-!”

“I have another idea!”

“HUSH, GIR! Now, back to what I was saying. Once you-”

Crashing sounds, the sound of a toilet flushing and something metal snapping and dragging across the floor. Zim interrupts himself only to swing around and watch as Gir rolls across the floor with his knees tucked into the living room. The Sir-Unit flips upwards, bounces off of Dib’s stomach (the tiny metal foot smacking him in the exposed belly button was not a pleasant feeling) before sliding across the floor. He looks up from the tile with an wide-eyed expression.

Zim looks inherently unphased. “What.”

Gir stares at him, giggles something incoherent, and rolls in a circle on the floor.

Dib is convinced Sir-Unit and Irken Master have some sort of telepathic connection because Zim sighs, something Irken muttered under his breathe before turning back to the human that was currently acting a chandelier. “Fine. Order the usual. Extra cheesy. No pepperoni.”

Dib’s used to seeing such insanity. These types of things were a usual occurrence. He is, however, _not_ prepared for the feeling of Zim’s claws patting down his chest and moving upper (or to him, lower) and the feeling of panic expanding as he flails to get away. “Let me go, you fucking freak-!”

Zim hisses at him, and it’s harrowing sound centimeters from his face. One clawed hand grabs his shirt to hold him steady and the other sinking into his back pocket. “CEASE YOUR SQIRMING. Zim is aware of your distaste for pepperoni, stupid. There won’t be any on it.”

“That is-” Dib lashes out with an open palmed punch and curses as Zim steps back just in time. The momentum leaves his body swinging and the motions were starting to make him sick. “That is not the problem here!”

His vision was starting to blur, though embarrassment is pretty sobering. Zim holds something in his hand. Dib’s wallet.

The alien scoffs at him, digging out a couple of bills out from the stolen leather. He tosses a few in Gir’s direction (who catches it his open mouth before scrambling off somewhere Dib can’t see in assumption to order pizza) before giving the human scrunched look. “Your face looks like one of those strawberry fruit plant things.”

He steps forward as if to place the wallet back and only halts when Dib starts punching the air in front of him. It swings him from the force. If Zim had eyebrows, they would be raised.

Dib grits his teeth and chooses, smartly, not to acknowledge how insanely stupid he must look. “Strawberries aren’t a fruit, dumbass. They’re a berry. It’s literally in the name.” A pause. “And it’s because I’ve been hanging upside down forever, asshole.”

“HA! Your body can’t even handle adverse changes in gravity! Humans are more primitive than I originally thought!” Zim barks out an obnoxious laugh, and Dib is half a second from mustering the strength to ~~kiss~~ kick the stupid grin off his face before he feels sudden weightlessness. Dib braces for the impact of his skull against the tile, but he’s suddenly tilted and his feet are slammed against the floor instead.

The world is spinning. His stomach churns and his balance is skewed. It takes him a moment to hold steady on his feet, and another moment to relax his breathing as his heartrate adjusts to the sudden rush of blood back to his lower limbs. Dib rubs his wrists and wiggles his toes in his shoes. He didn’t realize how numb he was starting to become.

Once the colors on the tiles stop merging into blurs, he looks up to find Zim staring. HIs mouth is pressed into a fine line, undisguised eyes are flitting up and down his form.

Dib doesn’t like that. Well, he _does_ like the attention, actually. But he doesn’t like that he likes it. Fuck.

“You didn’t complain about feeling compromised earlier.” Zim states.

Maybe that’s because Dib was a little too preoccupied with imaging recreating a certain famous Spiderman scene in his own head. “Fuck off. I’m leaving before I puke all over your shit.” He turns, throws a middle finger up and stumbles with what little dignity he has left to the front door. “Hold the world domination until tomorrow.”

“ _Moron._ ” Zim’s frown deepens as Dib’s hand encircles the doorknob. “Computer!”

Something metallic clicks nearby, and the Dib yanks his hand back as he’s zapped him through the doorknob. He yelps, craddling his sore palm. It wasn’t strong, nothing to cause any real damage aside from a painful pinch. He hears the gears of the house’s security system turn into place, frowning at the now-locked door and turning to Zim with a sneer. “What the hell?!”

“Do my GENIUS plans of humanity’s demise _bore_ you, Dib?” The alien’s arms cross. “Are you not afraid of what destruction I could bring down upon your pitiful, miserable planet if left alone?”

The answer is immediate. “As if I’d ever let you get the chance, alien scum.”

Zim’s response is typical. “THEN FACE ME IN THE TRIALS OF COMBAT!”

Dib scans the agitated alien, all sharp edges and explosive attitude, (confidence that never waivers, an always present twitch in his right antenna, clawed hands that are thinner and longer and could possibly swollen Dib’s own hand if he offered it-)

The teenager can feel the muscles in his face twitch before running a hand down it. “Listen, I’m- I’m tired, okay?” The moment he speaks the words, he regrets it. Zim’s posture softens and his eyes narrow, calculating. Dib admitting to weakness of any sort in the midst of their conflicts was unusual. He swallows the lump in his throat and continues anyway. “I don’t want to fight you right now.” Or ever again, preferably.

A moment of pause and silence. Dib considers he pros and cons of breaking and climbing out of a window.

Zim huffs, walking over to plop down on the couch. He slumps against one side and props his elbow against the arm rest so he could rest his cheek in hand, a sour expression on his face. “ _Fine_. Consider this an act of mercy that I do not cut you down where you stand.”

“Thanks, I’m _so_ grateful.” Dib rolls his eyes, pointly ignores Zim’s boast and tries the doorknob again. Electricity shoots through his finger tips and his hisses at the tingling skin. A short bout of laughter sounds from behind him. “Dude. Unlock the door. And give me back my wallet.”

Zim has found the remote, turned on the TV and flipped to a reality show that Dib remembers him saying he liked to watch because of how sad their lives were. “Nonsense. The pizza-man will be here any minute now.”

Outside the front door, there’s a zap of electricity, a scream, and cardboard hitting the ground with the sound of someone running away.

Zim looks away from the TV. “There it is. Gir!”

Dib has half a second to step aside before a green blur rockets into the living room, face slamming against the front door. Gir pops up, opens the door, grabs the pizza delivery and closes it faster before Dib could even think to shove his foot through the entryway. “I’ve gots it! The pizza disease!”

Dib watches as Gir hops onto the couch, slice already in hand, and becoming immediately entranced by the television. Zim glances in Dib’s direction in mild interest, cheese strings hanging out of his mouth as he chews, and only returns back to the show program once Dib shuffles over in defeat, grabs his own slice, and sits as far away as Zim as the sofa could possibly allow.

* * *

Staring at his coffee isn’t going to magically make Zim disappear.

In Dib’s defense, there’s nothing else he can do mentally at the moment aside from fixating on how the creamer turns the dark liquid a softer brown. There’s an itching feeling that if he looks up, he’s going to gather a headache within seconds. Not that he doesn’t already have one, but the sight of Zim silently staring at him through his bedroom window after he returned from the kitchen was not something Dib was expecting, and not something he was awake enough to handle.

It’s way too early in the morning, a glance towards his alarm clock tells him it’s 7:38AM on a Saturday. No where near their usual scuffle hours. He’s still in his pajamas, hair tussled from sleep and his glasses sat skewed on his face. He doesn’t know whether he should be embarrassed by the fact that he’s disheveled and underdressed, or that his coffee mug was shaped like mothman from as an old Christmas gift he got from his sister. Wait, no. His coffee cup was awesome, anyone else just didn’t understand the craftsmanship. He takes a sip as if to solidify his inner thoughts.

A tapping noise. Dib blinks blearily to the shape still shadowed on his window before realizing that they’ve been staring at each other in silence for a awkward minute now. Zim squints at him, his body blocking the sunlight coming from behind him and casting a eerie shadow across Dib and the expanse of his room. The Pak legs holding him upright don’t help the image be any less creepy. It’s probably a sign that Dib has gotten way to used to the sight of an alien using his window as a doorway.

Zim is tapping methodically against the glass and Dib is starting to understand how fish in an aquarium feel like. He drags himself over, unclasps the lock (made of a specific steel impenetrable to lasers, thanks dad) and lifts the bottom of the window up only a few inches so he can stick his nose through the opening and stare blankly at the alien. “Good mornin-”

He has to pull back when Zim pushes his face through the opening, _way too close_ for comfort to Dib’s face and barks at him. “Zim has a question.”

Dib puts his palm over Zim’s face. “No.”

He pushes, refrains from smiling as the alien yelps as he’s tipped backwards. Pak legs lose grip and Dib snorts into his coffee as Zim jerks, curses something Irken and tumbles into the bushes two stories down. Dib waits two, three seconds to hear some angered screaming (he’s fine) before shutting the window and securing the lock. He pulls the curtains for extra protection so the green bastard couldn’t crawl back up and glare at him.

Dib looks down, sniffs his coffee and sighs. It’s gone cold. He turns heel towards the kitchen.

If he’s lucky, Zim will take the hint and sulk off back to his base where Dib could exchange blows with him later, or go over their newest assignment from Swollen Eyeball. Better yet, Dib might not even contact the green asshole. He’ll go off the radar, fake his own death and just ghost the alien or something. (pun not intended) For no other reason that Dib is getting annoyed with him. Yeah. That’s it.

Fantasy thoughts play themselves out in his head as he walks down the stairs. Dib wonders if he put a pair of his glasses on a sac of flour with a smiley face drawn on it and cannonballed it into the acid-pool of the city-dump, would Zim even be able to tell the difference.

He doesn’t get to linger on the thought as he reenters the kitchen and comes face to face with a certain green, alien bastard sitting at his kitchen table with his claws clasped together. His face is twisted into a permanent frown. There are twigs and leaves sticking out of his wig.

Dib deadpans. “How did you get in my house?”

“Zim will be asking the questions here, stinky.”

He’s promptly ignored. Dib faces the microwave with full intention of pretending there wasn’t currently an insane genocidal alien in his kitchen covered in foliage, heats his coffee and bares with the heat of the alien’s stare against the back of his neck. “YOU IGNORE ZIM?”

He stops the microwave, checks the temp, and heats it again. “Yep.”

“Me? ME? The almighty DESTROYER of your planet? Future ruler of your solar system? ME??”

“Shouting doesn’t make you any easier to listen to.”

He plucks his finished coffee from the microwave only to have it ripped from his hands. Dib blinks tiredly at the sight of Zim holding his cup with careful precision not to spill it, but far out from the human’s reach. He’s actually a little surprised at the speed it took for Zim to lunge from the table. “What-”

“You’re not giving up on Earth, are you? Is that is? _Hmm?_ ” Zim doesn’t know personal boundaries the same way he doesn’t know how to control the volume of his own voice. Dib cringes at the thought of his sister waking up and bringing her wrath down upon the both of them. Zim is not plagued by such worries. “Leaving Zim for the pitiful excuse to pursue science. It’s that father unit of yours, isn’t it? ISN’T IT?”

“Will you _shut up?_ ” Dib shout-whispers, lunging for his coffee. Zim switches it from one hand to the other, a grin on his face. Dib sneers at it. “No, I’m not working under my dad, idiot. I’m just-”

He cuts himself off. _What_ , exactly, was his excuse supposed to be?

Maybe something along the lines of; _Oh, hey Zim! Sorry, but I think I’ve gotten a bit of a huge crush on you that I have no idea how to deal with, so now I think I’ll try to forget you exist in order to cope with the fact that I’m slowly going insane with this new revelation!_

It takes a moment for Dib to realize he’s cut himself off with no explanation and has just been staring at Zim for about thirty seconds now. The alien’s gaze squints at him, coffee still held out of range.

…The front door of the fridge looks like the perfect place for Dib to start banging his head right about now.

“I have a life outside of you, Zim.” He starts there because he doesn’t know how else to. “I have…hobbies, school, friends-” He’s going to ignore the amusement that flashes across the alien’s face at that last point. “-I’ve got other places and plans to attend to that don’t involve you.”

Zim wrinkles his face. “Distractions. Get rid of them.”

“Fuck off.”

Zim grits his teeth, opening his mouth as if he were going to make some open declaration of war before snapping it closed. Instead of whatever he was going to say, Dib watches in disgruntlement as Zim tilts the coffee cup back, chugs all the liquid in one go. “ _HACKK_. FINE! Fine. Zim will figure out what little _game_ you’re playing at here, stink-beast. I’ll find these…distractions and-”

“That didn’t have any sugar in it.” Dib cuts him off, eyes widening at how Zim coughs and hacks in a near comical manner. “That was uh…is that gonna kill you? Could you even drink that?”

“OF COURSE. Zim is, eh, immortal. Do not question it.” He shoves the coffee cup back into the hands of the human, beats his chest with his fist and clears something up from his throat. Dib doesn’t know whether he should laugh or be concerned. “Listen. LISTEN. You can’t hide your…secrets from me, Dib. I’ll find them out eventually. AND THEN! Then you’ll regret not ever taking me seriously!”

Dib puts the emptied mug into the sink. He runs the water to rinse it out, then lets the water run over his hands “Yeah, okay.”

“Do not underestimate me, stinky. I’ll see to it tha-HEY! HEY! NO! AAH STOP ATTACKING ZIM-”

Zim flails wildly to get away as Dib flicks his fingers to spray water in his direction. “Shoo.”

“I’LL KILL YOU.”

He reaches into the sink and cups water into his hands, and Zim can barely scramble out of the house fast enough.

* * *

Dib ignores him for the next week and a half.

Week and a half, specifically, because that’s as long as he made it without Zim quite literally _hunting him down_.

Roll back a bit. Ignoring Zim, almighty alien invader and current biggest threat to all life on Earth, takes a lot more effort than just not responding to empty threats and walking away at open declarations of war. It takes strategy and planning, not to mention the amount of patience Dib has to dedicate solely to pretending he can’t feel the seering burn of the alien’s glare boreing holes into his neck every time he enters within a thirty feet radius of the guy.

Avoiding him at school felt like a game. If Zim cornered him in the cafeteria at lunch, Dib started eating on the school steps outside. If Zim tired to trail him in the hallways, Dib would start making excuses to stay after class. Any paper planes or notes thrown at him in class was crushed in Dib’s palm and stuffed into his desk without looking at them. It could be considered cruel, but he plays it off as willful annoyances.

He stays glued to his phone on the walk home, a routine that didn’t even always guarantee an escort aside from sometimes his sister, now Zim was boldly walking along side him. He rants about his day, the other students. He doesn’t understand what SATs are, or senioritis and why all the students are getting infected with it. He approaches Dib like there’s nothing wrong and is as animated and talkative as ever, even as the human barely looks up from his phone screen if only to nod a few times before mumbling an insult and retreating into the safety of his home.

Zim always looks a little disgruntled when he does that, but he leaves all the same.

Avoiding Zim was not easy, but it was doable. Distractions could be difficult to maintain but easy to find, and his currently was in the form of a huge run-down house on the edge of the city, painted an ugly mucus yellow with boarded windows and constant sense of unease foreboding around it.

It looks more like your stereotypical vampire castle hide out like what they show in the comics and cartoons rather than any place for a werewolf. Dib doesn’t question it though. It’s secluded and quiet, and Swollen Eyeball is never wrong when it comes to the mission’s locations.

It was big as a mansion yet lacking all the elegance as one. He wonders how high the roof could be climbed, and if there was anything stashed away in the attic like the forums said.

Dib forgoes his backpack, double checking his pockets; Holy Water, a silver knife, a flashlight, only his camera stayed looped around his neck. The sky was darkening into a warm pink and orange mixture, close enough to night for the werewolf to be active, but too light for him to leave his abode. If Dib wanted to be quick, he needed to act fast.

Getting into the house isn’t hard. Maybe the creature didn’t expect anyone would ever be interested in a house in such a sorry state. (Or, it turned unwanted guests and burglars into meals) Dib feels like a vampire entering a home without an invitation, and breaks in through a window.

The house is quiet. He’s tense, heart thumping in his chest. He shines the flashlight around the room, and it appears so much bigger on the inside than it did outside. It was not a smart idea to come here alone, but it’s a little too late to back out now.

It’s dusty, like no one has been living here for years, and what little furniture was present was molded and covered in a layer of grime from years of disuse. The room is large and feels empty, with a large staircase leading further into the dark, and a overhead that stretches so high that Dib can’t see the pattern of the ceiling in the dark.

Something smells…horrible. Rotting, and a faint scent of burnt flesh. Dib holds his nose, squints at the crosses on the walls, snapping a picture and then another of a few paper plates scattered across the floor. There’s reddish brown stains on the floor he’s careful not to step into. They’re old, far too aged to be recent, but Dib frowns at the implications regardless-

The floorboards creak.

Dib whips around, shining a flashlight into a corner, one hand curls around the silver knife-

It happens so fast, it’s flung from his hand along with the flashlight, knocking against the floor and shining the beam in a random direction. Something curls in the back of Dib’s collar, yanks him upwards until his feet are rising off the ground and Dib chokes as he’s pulled uncermmounsly upwards, rising into the ceiling with a hard weight wrapping taut around his waist and a hand coming up to cover his mouth.

He struggles until his back hits something firm, legs kicking and breath hitching and biting down on whatever decided to snatch him in the dark-

“Ack- you! Filthy, _filthy_ little-!” The hand slides away from his mouth. Dib feels the impacts of air in his lungs and shock in his system. “YOU BIT ZIM.”

Dib doesn’t know what to curse first; the fact that Zim and his Pak legs were holding him hostage against the ceiling, or that the noise from all that ruckus had no doubt blown in cover, if not just secured themselves as a new hunting target for the creature that may or may not be residing in there.

“You fucker!” Dib whisper-yells, spit on the corner of his mouth from where he struggled against Zim’s hand. Turning his head is a challenge, but he makes sure he can glare into those purple contacts with all the unbridled fury of somehow who just had his evening and plans royally fucked. “What the hell are you doing here?! Do you have any idea what you’ve-!”

“You’ve been avoiding me, Stink-boy. Don’t act Zim is too stupid to realize.” Zim’s tone is a mixture of a hiss and a scold, and it’s grating against Dib’s ear. “Don’t think I haven’t caught onto your little scheme. It’s insulting!”

His arms presses against Dib’s stomach, palms in his sides, claws sinking into the fabric but avoiding the flesh. For a moment, as humiliated and angry as he is, Dib realizes he has no fear of falling. He still beats at his arm with rapid fury though. “You followed me-”

A short huff. “You stink from a mile away. You’re not hard to track-”

“ _Again_. You followed me _again_ -”

“You left Zim behind!”

“I don’t need you here!” Dib’s voice comes out a little louder than he intended. The body behind him stiffens. “For fucks sake, Zim-”

When Zim interrupts, he speaks low and heated. “I care little whether you need me or not, Zim knows what you’re here to do.”

Somewhere in the house, a door hinge creaks. Dib squirms a little harder. “Then why the fuck are you trying to secure our death certificates? Are you trying to kill us both?”

A short bark of laughter that sounds of raw throat and nervous restraint. Zim sounds like he’s torn between anger and amusement. The tightening around Dib’s torso does not feel friendly. “Not us, idiot boy.”

They’re making too much noise with their argument. Something in the house creaks again, followed by a heavy thud. It’s too dark, too dusty to make out anything solid. The only source of light Dib had is sitting on it’s side on the floor below them, and the glow of Zim’s Pak was hardly anything to go off by.

Dib feels his muscles tense and his heart skip a beat, neither in a good way. “You’re going to get us both turned into dinner anyway. You’re ruining the mission!”

Zim goes quiet, just enough for Dib to hear something open and close closer to the main room they were in. Footsteps, slow and methodical sound out from the silence. It doesn’t sound like they’re wearing shoes. There’s scent of wolf in the air.

Dib looks down. He can’t see the floor in the darkness. The bottom is shrouded and he can’t tell the distance from the drop anymore.

“Mission?” Zim speaks. Dib doesn’t need to turn to feel the alien’s face scrunch together in confusion. “What is this mission you speak of?”

A pause. Dib’s dying struggles has come to a halt. It smells like salt and rust and dust burning in his nose. The camera dangles from his neck and bumps against his chest uncomfortably.

“Zim.” He whispers. Slowly, Dib turns his head within grip until his hair brushes against Zim’s face, nose nearly touching his cheek, and stares at him. “What do you think I’m here to do?”

Purple eyes blink at him. “You’re here to meet with your secret love-pig. Obviously.”

Dib was gonna kill him. If they survived this, and as soon as Dib figured out how to calm the rapid arrhythmia in his chest, he was going to kill him. With a garden hose.

He doesn’t get a chance to voice that threat.

Something hard and coiled wraps around his ankle and Dib for the second time in the night finds himself ripped away from safety, (dare he call Zim that), flung through the air until he’s slammed against the furniture. His back hits the hard wood of the sofa and he’s tilted back with it, toppling over with a grunt of pain even as the aged cushions tried to soften the impact. If he had met with the floor instead, his neck might have broken.

“Dib!”

Panic and surprise in Zim’s voice, overshadowed by the growl echoing in the room. It reverbs off the walls and sounds like low metal grating, deep and guttural. Dib groans as he tries to sit up, going stiff and eyes widening. Hot breathe against his face, rows of teeth. A wet snout presses too close to his face and fogs up his glasses.

It’s dark, but the werewolf is almost nearly exact as to what the forums described it to be. Large, gnarly, and inching up every piece of Dib for meat.

Dib kicks the underside of it’s jaw and barely, just barely, dodges his head in time for claws to catch into the backside of the tilted sofa, ripping open stuffing and fabric seconds away from where his throat used to be. It howls something incoherent, all broad shoulders and saliva dripping from it’s maw.

Dib makes it a few feet towards the knife and flashlight before something catches his pants leg and drags jagged red lines across his skin. The scream comes out choked.

The second hit doesn’t come. The sound of metal against tile, feral growling and wet sputtering from the werewolf as flesh and fur start to mar. Dib lunges for the general direction of the knife and flashlight, feels his fingers touch the handle of one and grasps it.

“Filthy, disgusting, REVOLTING-!”

He shines the light in the direction of the carnage just in time to see Zim slice the an ear off the werewolf from his perch on the creatures back; Paklegs stabbed into it’s burley sides and barely dodging the pained claws darting back to swat at him.

“You have-! AUGH!” Zim yelps as one Pak leg is grabbed at the end, the werewolf ripping it out of it’s side and holding the alien up by the metal. It’s jaw nearly unhinges, a roar escaping his throat. Zim hisses back with mirrored bared teeth.

Dib feels across the floor for the knife, doesn’t care that the base of the silver cuts into his fingers and chucks it. It’s not a good throw, he has no expertise of a knife-thrower, but he hears the sink of it hitting flesh and the pained howl that comes afterwards and takes that as a successful hit.

The short victory doesn’t last long as the werewolf grips the Pak leg and uses it as a sling shot to fling the Invader across the room.

He watches in fear as Zim’s shape flips and tumbles, and hardly relaxes when the alien skids on his feet, hunched over, Pak legs spread and claws flexed. Liquid dribbles out of his mouth “You have HORRIBLE tastes in love-pigs!”

If they weren’t currently in a showdown with a beast of the night, Dib would have smacked him. “Are we REALLY talking about this right now?!”

“It’s not even _human!_ ” Zim scoffs. He watches the werewolf writhe in pain before sparing a glance towards the human. “Though I don’t know what I expected-”

“Will you PLEASE shut up! I don’t even-”

Grating against tile interrupts him. The werewolf hooked it’s claws into the cushions of the sofa and flings it in Zim’s direction wholly like it weighed nothing. The alien’s eyes widen with a small yelp as he ducks, though it catches one of his Pak legs and knocks the balance out from underneath him until he’s sprawled out on the floor.

The logical part of brain says to pay attention to the salivating wolf across from them. The more unfortunate, and emotional part of Dib’s brain breaks that rule and Dib finds himself shining the flashlight over to Zim’s prone form. “Shit!”

He scrambles to his feet-

His legs buckle and immediately falls back down again with a hiss of pain. The air in his lungs sting and the blood pulsating out of his leg trailed down the fabric of his pants and stained his shoes. Dib grits his teeth, blow hot air out through his nose. This wasn’t the worst injury he’s ever had, in fact it’s actually pretty mild compared to the shit he’s gotten himself into.

Though, the sheer panic and rapid racing of his pulse as the werewolf slowed to a crawl, lunging in his direction was a new first. Dib brings up the flashlight in the last second, shoving it horizontally in the beast’s maw, the edges of his teeth skimming through the fabric of his sleeve and puncturing the skin in his arm.

It snarls at him, saliva dripping onto Dib’s cheek in a disgusting cluster. It’s arms are hanging limply by it’s side and only by a quick glance does Dib realize it’s heavily injured. Puncture marks decorated it’s shoulders. Deep, jagged and made by alien metal. The knife was sticking out of it’s open socket.

If he could just catch it off guard….if he could just…

Movement shifts in the corner of his eye. The glow of a Pak and the sound of metal rising, bending and reshaping a bit further away.

Dib grabs the camera still strapped around his neck, raises it to the snarling werewolf’s eyes and clicks the shutter.

The flash at such close range hurts him too, but even through scrunched eyes he can hear the yelp and whine of sharp pain. The weight above him disappears, the werewolf’s head shakes rapidly back and forth in an attempt to restore it’s vision.

A bright red light fills the room and disappears just as quickly. Burning fur stinks up the room as smoke drifts from the screeching werewolf’s neck. It glows as the flesh melts away. The creature’s howls are immeasurable. Loud and echoing through the chamber. Dib is scrambling back to catch his breath still, flashlight posed in front of him, he searches his pocket for the holy water-

A flash of metal darts across his vision and sinks into the werewolf’s neck. There’s a twitch in the body. Bloody foam forms in the corner of it’s mouth, opening and closing like a dying snake, then stills.

Zim stands over the lifeless lump with fading interested, a scowl painted on his face. One Pak leg is still embedded in the other’s neck, the lazor already sinking back into the confines of his Pak.

Dib pants heavy and wet, clutching the front of his shirt. He wipes the cool wetness off his face and doesn’t check to see if it’s sweat or drool. “…You can’t kill it without silver. It’ll heal and come back.”

Zim glances over at him. Violet eyes trail over Dib’s wet face, to the bloodied leg. His frown deepens, and he turns back to the body. The Pak leg unstucks itself from bone and throat with a sickening _squilch._ Dib flinches as it strikes down again in the same spot a second time, then a third, until the strings of muscle that was keeping the werewolf’s head attached to it’s body are reduced to splattered matter.

“Or just decapitate it.” Dib sighs, weighted and relieved. “That works too.”

Attempting to stand probably isn’t the best idea at the moment, so Dib retakes in his surroundings. The camera sits nestled in his lap, plenty of evidence on the roll that he’s certain that he doesn’t need an image of a decapiated werewolf body to show that the mission was successful, not like the physicals body itself won’t earn him points.

Dib’s grip around the flashlight loosen, and he takes a deep breathe. It’s a welcome feeling, one that helps him manage the pain stemming from his leg.

“I thought you couldn’t get any more disgusting.” Zim is completely judgmental in his tone and with no shame to hide it. He flicks the gore remaining on his Pak leg away, watching it splatter across the floor before sheathing it. He looks almost proud of himself, if it wasn’t for the obvious repulsion on his face from the mess. “All the filthy lifeforms in this universe you prefer this….this _mess_ as your affection”

Zim steps out from the puddle of blood pooling from the body as if to make his point. The adrenaline is wearing off, so Dib doesn’t know what to account his chuckle to when he answers.

“Yeah, no. I don’t even know this guy. Wolf. Whatever. He was just the subject of the investigation.” He snorts, shining the flashlight down to inspect his leg. It stung like hell and he was starting to be light headed, but at least it wasn’t too deep. The bleeding had stopped. He sighs. He’s not going to be able to save this pair of pants. “Jokes on you. You killed the wrong one.”

“So you do have one.”

Dib blinks, tears the flashlight beam away from his leg and shines it on Zim’s face. He wears an unreadable expression, eyes reflecting in the light the way human’s aren’t supposed to. “What?”

“A love-pig.” Zim repeats. There’s still blood smeared across his mouth. “Who is it?”

Silence. Dib swallows a lump in his throat. Hopes that Zim can’t hear the skip in his pulse that he can’t tell is whether from fear or something else entirely.

“No one.” Dib snarks. He outstretches a hand, the one without drool or blood staining his palm, and looks to Zim expectantly. “Take me home before I pass out or something.”

Zim is quiet for a moment. He walks forwards, grasps Dib’s hand and pulls him into standing position. He doesn’t veer an insult or mockery even as Dib curses colorful language accidently putting too much weight on the wrong leg.

He doesn’t wrap an arm around Zim’s neck as much as self preservation tells him it would save him the pain (and though Zim looked ready as if Dib was going to topple over any minute) He glances to the body cooling on the floor and to the alien company awaiting for something to happen.

Dib presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose. This would be, as always, another period of healing and damage control. The injury alone could take him out from investigations for a week at least, and that’s a whole week without viable excuse to avoid Zim. A glance towards the alien and it’s unwavering glare tells Dib that the bastard _knows_ that.

His tongue feels thick in his mouth when he opens it to speak. “We can order pizza when we get to my house.” He starts, and watches the alien tilt his head in questioning. “I’m inviting you over, Zim.”

The alien blinks, and for the first time in what feels like forever, the stoic expression shifts into something alot more Zim-like. “As if you could even refuse me in the first place. Your security systems are pathetically easy to penatrate.” A boyish grin, he sticks his hand into his jacket pockets and pulls out a leather wallet. “Of course, how else would you thank the AMAZING Zim for rescuing your worthless life.”

“…Have you had my wallet this whole time?”

Zim grabs him by the arm, and against the pain, Dib is dragged towards the door. “SILENCE. You will order the vegetarian options. Extra cheese.”

**Author's Note:**

> poor unnamed werewolf guy. dude got obliterated by a green space roach and some kid with a camera


End file.
